Manwith wrote: In Episode 17 when Mr. C is killed again Bob attacks because Freddie and Cooper are too big of a threat to leave to Mr. C/ and/ or he really wants to kill Freddie and/ or Cooper himself. .

Yep, and at that point Bob knew that a trap was set by the Fireman which moved his destination from Sarah’s home to the Sheriff’s station.

Eva Marie wrote:Thanks for that. I guess my point was that it takes courage for an artist to be humanist these days. It's too freaking easy to do ugly and nihilistic, because there's nothing at stake and it can be passed off as 'avant-garde' even when it stinks up the place like TR. This is why I just can't denote TR as experimental TV save for ep. 8 and the opening of ep.3. There has to be actual ambition to discover something new in an experiment, whereas TR was too bloody lazy to aim for anything at all except destruction of the old (it's anti-art like already mentioned).

Will it make a lasting impact on me? Yep, that of profound disgust I still have trouble washing away. It's also turned me off watching anything Lynch for life. That bloke needs mental help before he even thinks of putting anymore of his "ideas" on screen. TR also made me take an interest in MacLachlan with good fan pay-off.

In terms of emotional investment I've already moved on like others here. I just swallowed the stylish Good Behaviour and am looking to the 2nd season starting shortly.

I like your style, Eva Marie. Good to see you carrying the torch for the more hard-hitting, pisstaking criticism The Return deserves, now that the Class of May to August has passed on. Lynch himself would be disappointed, I think, if at least some of the contempt he's shown wasn't thrown back at him.

One of the most entertaining TR defences has to be that it's "Beckettian". Samuel Beckett relentlessly paying tribute to his own career throughout an eighteen-hour play in which he's self-cast as a heroic septuagenarian boasting that his willy isn't soft... Oh my giddy aunt.

Or the other Sam Beckett...

Sam Beckett boasting that his willy isn't soft... Well, it's certainly an improvement. Unless the actor playing him actually wrote the willy line, that is, and then edited in an admiring reaction shot from some hot young singer, one whose character seems to have no existence independent of his.

Chrystal Bell's humiliation in this show reminds me of the dreadful opera singer forced to perform repeatedly for an appalled public in Citizen Kane, except that Lynch's treatment of women elsewhere in TR makes me suspect something even crueller. Again, imagine Samuel Beckett or any other artist of integrity doing this kind of crap.

Would you still be saying that if the exact same show had been made by Tarantino?

"Can it be even considered avant-garde anymore? To me it comes off as a gimmick, outdated even. It's usually employed for shock, but we're all so used to it as such that it barely registers anymore.I think movies and tv shows are moving in the opposite direction of what TR represent."

That's my point. Even ep 8 felt like a violent version of the Twilight Zone to me. DL has worn his signature style so thin that all I could think of when I saw Andy in the Lodge was the Lynch parody short films on Gilmore Girls! TR's been the antithesis of 'fresh'. I found the camera in the vacuum cleaner on Breaking Bad more inventive than all of TR's antics put together.

In regard to Lynch's persona, did you guys/gals ever buy into that whole naive and kooky "Oh, golly" image he's so successfully cultivated? I was always skeptical of it, but TR totally destroyed it for me.

Also, all these personal attacks on Lynch? What's that about? He's just some guy, made some films and TV. Don't like it? Fair enough. Have criticisms of it's artistic or cultural merits, fine, I'm all ears. But you know, he hasn't killed anyone, he's not a bad person. Get some critical distance.

"Also, all these personal attacks on Lynch? What's that about? He's just some guy, made some films and TV. Don't like it? Fair enough. Have criticisms of it's artistic or cultural merits, fine, I'm all ears. But you know, he hasn't killed anyone, he's not a bad person. Get some critical distance."

There's a big cult of personality around him. The personal attacks are just counter balance to all the "he's such a visionary who poops rainbows" comments that we've been subjected to for the past 4 months. In fact, the attacks are rather mild in comparison to the mind-numbing fawning over Lynch's persona all over the rest of the Internet. It's impossible to maintain critical distance when you're faced with this avalanche every time you'd try to present a negative opinion on TR.

Any artist that banks on their larger than life persona to sustain their career and relevance to the degree that Lynch has done, opens themselves up to such attacks. TR has demonstrated that it's impossible to rationally assess his work at all without dismantling that persona because it's become a cloak of critical blindness. Irreverence is the quickest way to pierce that bubble.

Eva Marie wrote:In regard to Lynch's persona, did you guys/gals ever buy into that whole naive and kooky "Oh, golly" image he's so successfully cultivated? I was always skeptical of it, but TR totally destroyed it for me.

I don't think anyone has ever doubted that Lynch has a dark side, from the moment that his first film ended in an act of infanticide-as-spiritual-ascendence, as a reaction to his own ambivalence toward having an unplanned child. He has even talked about his parents wondering how that movie could have come from their son. And clearly the guy who wrote Frank Booth and Bobby Peru has some "strange and unproductive thinking" going on somewhere. I also think, pound for pound, the brilliant but deeply misanthropic 'Lost Highway' is a much darker (or as one thread put it, mean-spirited) work than TP S3. Like BV and W@H, S3 has ample doses of humanity, particularly revolving around Dougie, to balance out the darkness.

Now I can certainly understand the season not working for you, or if you're unhappy/unsettled seeing the darker elements of Lynch's larger body of work seeping more heavily into the world of TP. But in terms of this show shattering the "boy scout" public image he's cultivated, I disagree. I don't think S3 showed us anything new, and I've never found the "aw shucks" persona and the darkness mutually exclusive. Like all of us, he's a human being with plenty of complexity. He seems to work most of his darkness out in his work, as others might in psychiatry, and that seems to be working for him. As Jack Fisk said, if David hadn't gotten that AFI grant, someone might be dead.

All of that being said, Cooper dropping his sunny but formal "holy smokes" demeanor (which Lynch and Kyle have acknowledged was modeled on Lynch) and seeming to become something darker and more primal in Part 18 did feel rather autobiographical to me.

There's a tendency to believe that something difficult to watch, must be difficult to create. It's quite the opposite. Shows/films that attempt to pull the heartstrings are ten a penny. Those that actually get people where they live are rare, and take true talent.

The funniest comedy is far harder to write than the most experimental art film. Without true understanding of people, of what they fear and where they hurt, there's no brilliance, and no authenticity.

Don't be too quick to dismiss every simple story as Hallmark Channel schmaltz. It's too easy to put every cool image or thought that crossed your mind out there. Far harder to take those moments, dig into the heart of what they mean to you and craft them into a narrative that really connects.

it is difficult to know what to make of this sanctimonious gush.. Twin Peaks S3 clearly did ' get [alot] of people where they live', and was clearly made by someone with ' true talent'. In it's quieter moments it demonstrated a ' true understanding of people, what they fear and where they hurt'' and so in your terms manifested the requisite '' brilliance and authenticity''. Lynch clearly obeyed your imperative to '' to take those moments, dig into the heart of what they mean to you and craft them into a narrative that really connects '' - and they did connect for alot of people. But not for others - you, clearly, included. It is hard also to understand how a film-maker so conscious of aesthetic surface, image-making and personal style can be characterised as '' difficult to watch''. That was not the problem here. Nor do i think it was particularly difficult to create. The film-makers just ' let it flow'... sometimes to the point where they might have switched the tap off.

That the series was clearly uneven and flawed has been discussed endlessly in here, but pointing the finger at it for being ' inauthentic' as you apparently do above is surely having a laugh? If it had had a little less of a conscience about being authentic it would have perhaps qualified as better drama. The problem, if anything, was surely that it's heart was too much in the right place, rather than - as you apparently suggest - the opposite. ''Don't be too quick to dismiss ''. You said it, man.

Not difficult to work out what to make of it at all, if you're still around, Referendum. What you haven't included in the quote is that I was replying to a previous poster.

That previous poster had stated that for Lynch and Frost to craft a more linear/structured narrative would have been the 'easy' option. That kind of thing gets my hackles up - as a writer, I know there's nothing 'easy' about writing something good, be it traditional or anti-narrative, or anywhere on that continuum.

I'm not pointing fingers at Lynch. If he'd gone for a more structured approach, who's to say it would have been any better (or any worse). But one thing it wouldn't have been, and that's the easy option.

Sorry that you find the approach I take to my work every day to be 'sanctimonious guff'.

Venus wrote:Do any of the disappointed left in this thread feel that it's all done and gone now, all over? Literally it is but for me the first two series stood in high stead in my mind for 25 years and only grew in stature over the years. We're a few weeks after the last episode aired and it's already a footnote in my mind. I feel really sad about that.

Hey Venus!

Yeah, all I feel now when I remember the series is a feeling of sadness and loss. I doubt I'll revisit it

What you haven't included in the quote is that I was replying to a previous poster.

ah sorry. Understood. Sorry about the 'man' also - It was more of a colloquial hippy flourish that an assumption of gender.

I still don't agree with this as a criticism of Lynch's work though: ''There's a tendency to believe that something difficult to watch, must be difficult to create. It's quite the opposite. Shows/films that attempt to pull the heartstrings are ten a penny. Those that actually get people where they live are rare, and take true talent.'' It is not ' either/or. Lynch's work DOES connect with alot of people and get them where they live . That is why this forum exists! Others find it difficult to watch. My parents took me to see the elephant man as a teenager ( at my request). I thought it was amazing! They hated it as difficult weird and dark. So It is not necessarily ' quite the opposite '. I am still disagreeing with you, but more politely this time.

What you haven't included in the quote is that I was replying to a previous poster.

ah sorry. Understood. Sorry about the 'man' also - It was more of a colloquial hippy flourish that an assumption of gender.

I still don't agree with this as a criticism of Lynch's work though: ''There's a tendency to believe that something difficult to watch, must be difficult to create. It's quite the opposite. Shows/films that attempt to pull the heartstrings are ten a penny. Those that actually get people where they live are rare, and take true talent.'' It is not ' either/or. Lynch's work DOES connect with alot of people and get them where they live . That is why this forum exists! Others find it difficult to watch. My parents took me to see the elephant man as a teenager ( at my request). I thought it was amazing! They hated it as difficult weird and dark. So It is not necessarily ' quite the opposite '. I am still disagreeing with you, but more politely this time.

Eva Marie wrote: It's impossible to maintain critical distance when you're faced with this avalanche every time you'd try to present a negative opinion on TR.

I disagree, if someone replies to a criticism of TP:TR being weak, boring, pointless, dull, poorly acted, nonsensical with 'David Lynch is God', then it's just that they've just lost the ability to counter the criticism. Arguing back with 'David Lynch is a fraud' (or whatever) is a distraction from talking about the work, and the profoundly disappointing experience of watching it.

Eva Marie wrote:It's impossible to maintain critical distance when you're faced with this avalanche every time you'd try to present a negative opinion on TR.

Perhaps the situation you're referring to (behind your hyperbole) should be expected, considering that this is a Twin Peaks/David Lynch fan forum? In fact I'm not sure there's a place on the entire internet where yours and others' 'profoundly disappointed' sentiments, especially after all these weeks/months, seem more ill-placed. Virtually every single place I've seen/heard the new season discussed has had more positive energy about it than this, a Twin Peaks/Lynch forum. There's been so much enthusiasm surrounding the new season, such open-mindedness, such warmth to its aims. But coming here, one would never know it.

Those of you still coming here to (do little or nothing but) complain about the new season--why? If it was me, I'd let the people who did enjoy it have their fun. That would seem to be the more high-minded option. At worst, some of the posts in this thread are motivated by bitterness and/or out-right mean-spiritedness, and in their self-absorption and determination for others to get as little enjoyment out of something as they have, do not warrant sincere engagement. There is of course a place for constructive criticism--but this is something else.